How Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson Killed the Tsavo Man Eaters
When Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson was sent by his government to come to Kenya and
oversee the construction of the railway bridge over the Tsavo river, he did not anticipate that the greatest danger he would face was to come from two mane less lions based in the heart of the Tsavo. The ordeal started soon after the construction began. The two man eaters would sneak at night in the workers' sleeping quarters, drag them one by one from their beds and eat them up in the thickets. This to the Indian workers was like living in a horror movie.The workers remaining were so flightened that they run away from the construction site. The work had to be temporarily put on hold. This made Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson realise that he had to stop the madness of these two lions. His first thought was trapping them. He set up traps but the clever lions would eveade them. When this did not bear fruits, he set an ambush from a tree top at night and waited in vain. After months of waiting, he first shot and wounded the first lion on the 9th of December the same year. This he did using a bullet from a Martini-Enfield chambered in.303 caliber. The lion escaped and later returned at night to attack Peterson as he hunted it. He shot it with a .303 Lee Enfield and it was found dead the following morning. The other lion was shot three weeks later making the nightmare come to an end. This Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson did using a a .303 Lee Enfield. He said that he shot at it five times before it finally succumbed to the gun shots. Though severely wounded, the lion would charge at him fiecely after every shot. He finished it off by shooting at its head and chest twice using a Martini-Henry carbine. He narrated that the lion died gnawing at a fallen tree branch still trying to reach at him. He kept the tropies as soveurnirs byt he later sold them to the Chicago field Museum where they can be publicly viewed to date.How Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson Killed the Tsavo Man Eaters
By: adventure africa expedition